Microsoft has gone official with pricing on its Surface RT tablets. Most people have been hoping the Microsoft Surface RT tablets would come in at less than Apple’s hugely popular iPad. However, Microsoft’s pricing puts Surface in close competition with comparable third generation iPads and higher than the iPad 2.

The 32GB Windows Surface RT tablet without the Black Touch cover, which also doubles as a keyboard, is $499. That makes it $100 more expensive than the entry-level Apple iPad 2 at $399. The $499 entry price for the Surface RT tablet puts it on par with pricing for the 16GB “New iPad”.

If you want the Touch Cover with its integrated keyboard, that option is $100 when you order, or $119.99 as an add-on later. You can pre-order the 32GB version with the cover for $599.

The third version has 64 GB of storage and ships with the Touch Cover – it will cost you $699. Any of the three tablet versions can be pre-ordered today with delivery expected by October 26.

Analysts seem to think that Windows 8 tablet pricing is too expensive, however, what do you guys think?

In other Surface news, you can catch Microsoft’s first ad for the new tablet here:

Must be true then. There's no way in the world that all us full time software engineers that have been building business / military / simulation / health care / government / educational / games / productivity software for the last 30 years for Windows could possibly number anywhere near the number of devs who have been banging out those hugely complex mobile apps that take eons to build (like seriously, some take more than a couple of weeks! OMG!)

Also funny how the majority of jobs I see for web, server side or desktop are all heading toward C#... even iOS games :)

Yup, and I will continue to buy applications for the Microsoft desktop . I run Windows 8 on another machine and I doubt I will buy any applications for Metro anytime soon, I'm just not interested. I doubt many other people here are either based on the incredibly negative reaction to Metro, even after we've have had months to get used to it.

I do know that this is a needed gateway into tablet apps, but even then Microsoft needs to make more compelling tablet hardware. A late 2012 tablet with much slower hardware, a much lower res screen, and no app library compared to an early 2012 iPad is a very hard sell.

Either way, no arguments from me on the desktop side, obviously Microsoft has the most developers there and excellent developer tools. Hell, they have the best developer tools on the mobile side as well, but the developer community on the mobile side will take a while to get going since there are no customers there yet. We'll see if Metro jumpstarts it.